Trump To be ‘Reinstated’ To Office ???

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-3-2021

Trump really does believe that he, along with two former GOP senators, will be ‘reinstated’ to office this summer.

Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” to office this summer after “audits” of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia, and a handful of other states have been completed.

I can attest, too, that Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact.

It will be tempting for weary conservatives to dismiss this information as “old news” or as “an irrelevance.” It will be tempting, too, to downplay the enormity of what is being claimed, or to change the subject, or to attack the messengers by implying that they must “hate” Trump and his voters.

But such temptations should be assiduously avoided. We are not talking here about a fringe figure within the Republican tent, but about a man who hopes to make support for his outlandish claims “a litmus test of sorts as he decides whom to endorse for state and federal contests in 2022 and 2024.”

They understand why it mattered that Hillary Clinton publicly described Trump as an “illegitimate president” who had “stolen” the election.
And they understand why it mattered that Jimmy Carter insisted that Trump had “lost the election” and been “put into office because the Russians interfered.”

The scale of Trump’s delusion is quite startling. This is not merely an eccentric interpretation of the facts or an interesting foible, nor is it an irrelevant example of anguished post-presidency chatter. It is a rejection of reality, a rejection of law, and, ultimately, a rejection of the entire system of American government.

There is no Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution.
There is nothing even approximating a Reinstatement Clause within the United States Constitution.
The election has been certified, Joe Biden is the president, and, until 2024, that is all there is to it.
It does not matter what one’s view of Trump is. It does not matter whether one voted for or against Trump.
It does not matter whether one views Trump’s role within the Republican Party favorably or unfavorably.
We are talking here about cold, hard, neutral facts that obtain irrespective of one’s preferences; it is not too much to ask that the former head of the executive branch should understand them.

Just how far out there is Trump’s theory? Consider that, even if it were true that the 2020 election had been stolen — which it is absolutely not — his belief would still be absurd.

It could be confirmed tomorrow that agents working for a combination of al-Qaeda, Venezuela, and George Soros had hacked into every single voting machine in the country and altered the totals by tens of millions, and it would remain the case there is no mechanism within the American legal order for a do-over of any sort.

In such an eventuality, there would be indictments, an impeachment drive, and a constitutional crisis. But, however bad it got, Donald Trump would not be “reinstated” to the presidency.

That is not how America works, how America has ever worked, or how America can ever work. American politicians do not lose their reelection races only to be reinstalled later on, as might the second-place horse in a race whose winner was disqualified. The idea is otherworldly and obscene.

There is nothing to be gained for conservatism by pretending otherwise. To acknowledge that Trump is living in a fantasy world does not wipe out his achievements or render anything else he has said incorrect.

It does not endorse Joe Biden or hand the Republican Party over to Bill Kristol or knock down an inch of the wall on the border.
It merely demands that Donald Trump be treated like any other person: subject to gravity, open to rebuttal, and liable to be laughed at when he becomes so unmoored from the real world that it is hard to know where to begin in attempting to explain him.

_________________

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-4-2021

Trumpworld prays he won't mention QAnon conspiracy theory he will be 'reinstated' in August.

Donald Trump allies are dreading the backlash that will occur if the former president pushes the QAnon conspiracy theory that he will be reinstated in August.

The August reinstatement conspiracy theory has been derided as delusional because the United States Constitution does not provide a mechanism to reinstate the former reality TV actor.

Although it only requires an elementary understanding of civics to know it is impossible, Trump reportedly fell for the conspiracy theory after talking with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Trump allies reportedly fear Trump will begin publicly talking about the QAnon delusion.

"On Saturday evening, Donald Trump, the former president and current leader of the GOP, is scheduled to deliver another one of his red-meat-hurling, post-presidency speeches at the North Carolina Republican Party's annual convention.

And there is one particular morsel that various Trump advisers and confidants are praying that the twice-impeached former president does not serve to his followers this weekend—or, ever.

'I conveyed something [to Trump] to the effect of,
'It would be a terrible idea to even say the word, 'August' [at Saturday's event],' said a person who is still in contact with the Republican ex-president,"
The Daily Beast reported Friday evening.

"In the time since New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted on Monday that 'Trump has been telling a number of people he's in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August,' several close allies of the former president have made a point of getting in touch with Trump to deliver a simple message, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The message: Whoever is trying to get in your ear to tell you that you could be 'reinstated' in the White House by August, or at any time during President Joe Biden's term in office, doesn't know what they're talking about, and repeating their deranged theories in public could be used against you by your enemies."

The talk of reinstatement comes against the backdrop of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn suggesting a Myanmar-style coup.

"The idea that Trump would be 'reinstated' in a few weeks is the stuff of MAGA fan fiction—but that hasn't stopped Trump from privately entertaining the baseless August theory.

He has claimed the theory is something that many 'highly respected' people have recently assured him is possible (once the nonexistent evidence of massive 2020 voter fraud is finally revealed), as The Daily Beast reported this week.

The former president has refused to accept reality and admit that he legitimately lost the last U.S. presidential election, and has spearheaded the Republican Party's anti-democratic crusade that kicked into high gear in November and continues to this day."

_________________

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-4-2021

Trump keeps exaggerating the number of people who cast ballots for him in the 2020 election by nearly 800,000 votes.

Trump has repeatedly said that 75 million voters or more cast ballots for him in November.
In fact, he received 74,223,369 votes, which is nearly 800,000 fewer than he's claimed.
Joe Biden got 81,282,916 votes and 306 electoral votes, securing him the presidency.

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that 75 million people voted for him in the 2020 US presidential election.

Most recently, he made the claim in a statement slamming Facebook's decision to ban him from the platform for two years, effective January 7.

"Facebook's ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election," he said in the statement. "They shouldn't be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can't take this abuse anymore!"

It's unclear who Trump was referring to when he said "plus many others." And in reality, he received nearly 800,000 fewer votes than what he claims.

According to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, 74,223,369 people cast their ballots for Trump in the November general election.
That's 46.9% of the popular vote and 776,631 fewer than the 75 million Trump claims voted for him.

President Joe Biden received 81,282,916 votes, or 51.3% of the popular vote. Biden also notched 306 Electoral College votes compared to Trump's 232, winning him the White House.

Since losing the election to Biden, Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that it was "rigged" and stolen from him.
His campaign and Republican-allied groups across the country filed dozens of lawsuits, nearly all of which were dismissed or rejected for failing to prove that there was widespread voter fraud in the election.

In the months since leaving office, Trump has continued claiming he was the rightful winner of the election, and he's also teased a potential 2024 run for the White House.
In recent weeks, he's endorsed the nonsense conspiracy theory that he'll be "reinstated" as president in August, according to The New York Times' Maggie Haberman.

Haberman added that Trump has been "laser focused" on Republican-endorsed audits in battleground states whose electoral results he's still trying to overturn.

He's ignored pleas from those around him to drop the matter and is reportedly obsessed with an ongoing GOP-led "audit" in Arizona, while also strategizing on how to launch similar audits in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

The ex-president used to have a blog in which he frequently complained about the election results and slammed Republicans who he believed were disloyal to him because they refused to support his lies about the race.

But Trump's senior communications advisor, Jason Miller, told CNBC this week that the blog "will not be returning," and added, "It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on."

Business Insider.

_________________

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-5-2021

"Delusion." "Off the chart bonkers." "Insane." "Objectively nuts." These are some of the terms that pundits — both on the left and on the right — are using to describe Donald Trump's reported belief that he will be "reinstated" as president in August, a belief that is tied to the growing enthusiasm in QAnon circles for a Myanmar-style coup d'état.

It's a comforting story: that Trump is a doddering fool who is lost in a pathetic fantasy. After all, there is no process to "reinstate" a former president.
Moreover, the people who Trump is clearly getting this idea from are total kooks like his former lawyer Sidney Powell and pillow salesman Mike Lindell.
And Trump himself is the "inject bleach" guy, no one's model for rigorous empirical thinking.

Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where it's unwise to underestimate Donald Trump.

It's true, of course, that there is no pathway (outside of a true military coup, which Trump is almost certainly not up to organizing) that would oust Joe Biden and install Trump in the White House within three months.
But after all of this time, one would hope that U.S. punditry would grasp the fact that Trump's conspiracy theories are often not so much literal as they are aspirational.

Trump uses wild conjecture to project images of what he wants the world to look like, and passively allows his minions — whether they are close to him, like Rudy Giuliani, or worship him from afar, like the Capital rioters — to self-direct the actions they will take in order to make his fantasy a reality.

As I note in today's Standing Room Only newsletter, Trump loves the "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" style of giving orders, where he just puts a wish out into the world and hopes other people will pick up what he's putting down.

As his former lawyer Michael Cohen famously noted in his testimony before the House before he went to prison for crimes committed on Trump's behalf,
"He doesn't give you questions, he doesn't give you orders. He speaks in a code."
It's a strategy that shields Trump from consequences while his self-directed minions, like Cohen or Giuliani or the Capitol rioters, take the fall. It also means less work for Trump.

So, no, Trump isn't going to be reinstated. But he probably doesn't actually think he will be.
(His fellow conspiracy theorists like Sidney Powell will also, when the chips are down, admit that they don't really believe all the crazy crap they say.)

But the purpose of floating that he could be reinstated is not to express a sincerely held belief so much as it is to send a message to his followers and, even more disturbingly, to GOP leadership:

He wishes them to ramp up their already alarming attacks on democracy. Trump has already been successful at turning his false claims that the election was stolen from him into a litmus test for Republican politicians. Now he's upping the ante, using the mainstream media to amplify his message that it's time to start getting even more aggressive in the fight to end American democracy.

The most immediate goals expressed in Trump's conspiracy theories are often not achievable, but in the mere act of setting a marker with conspiracy theories, Trump often moves the needle closer to his goal of outright fascism.

We saw how this played out with the January 6 insurrection. Trump fixated for weeks on a conspiracy theory that held that Vice President Mike Pence could simply deny Congress the right to count electoral votes and that doing so would magically result in Trump getting a second term.

On its surface, this conspiracy theory was delusional. Pence didn't hold that power, and even if he did, the Constitution orders that the person sworn in is not the guy who lost the election, but the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

So while Trump failed at his literal goal of staying in the White House, by every other measure, the January 6 insurrection he incited was a wild success.

To be sure, there were a few shaky days right after it happened where many Republican leaders seemed angry with Trump. Soon, however, they fell in line in supporting Trump, covering up for his insurrection, and punishing any Republican leaders who continued to believe that attempting to overthrow the U.S. government is a bad thing to do.

And then they weaponized the Big Lie Trump used to incite the insurrection in order to justify state-level assaults on voting rights and fair elections.

Republican leaders "agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized," Adam Serwer writes in a piece titled
"The Capitol Rioters Won" for the Atlantic. Now "the Republican Party has focused on the long-term project of engineering the electorate to preserve its hold on power."

One of the most common misconceptions about conspiracy theories is that they are sincere expressions of belief. Sometimes that's true, but just as often, conspiracy theories are better understood functionally, not literally.

They are tools that conspiracy theorists use to further their larger goals. It's irrelevant whether Trump "believes" that he could have kept power by stopping the electoral vote count on January 6 or that he'll be reinstated in August.

What matters is how he uses these conspiracy theories, to promote the ideological belief that a multi-racial democracy is bad, that a white conservative minority deserves to rule over the majority, and that any means necessary to make that happen are on the table.

Trump doesn't just believe that he'll be "reinstated" in August. If it was merely a belief, he could play golf all day, content that the Secret Service will show up soon to whisk him off to his rightful place in the White House on the appointed date.

But instead, as the National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke — himself a hardcore conservative, if one who is a little more reality-bound than most — wrote, "Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief." It's not a passive expression of belief, but an instrument that Trump is using to manipulate the media, his followers, and the Republican party.

This particular conspiracy theory has a twofold function. The first and most obvious is to keep pushing the Republican party towards fascism.

But of course, they're already going there, so probably didn't need more of a push from Trump.

The second, and perhaps more important to Trump himself, is that the conspiracy theory keeps him at the center of this story. Trump is "frustrated" and "having a hard time getting through" because "people are no longer obsessed with what Donald Trump has to say."

It's definitely possible that Republicans will use Trump's Big Lie to build up all this anti-democratic infrastructure — voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, laws that make it easy to throw out elections that Democrats win — and that politicians other than Trump will be the main beneficiaries.

There are almost three years until Republicans can vote in a presidential primary, and a lot can happen in that time.
Trump's emergence as the next nominee is not guaranteed, as much as it may seem to be right now. And so the GOP may be set up to steal the next presidential election, but for someone who isn't Trump.
This new conspiracy theory helps reinscribe the notion that Trump is the only path forward for the GOP, that his ascendance is preordained, and that Republicans better not even consider thinking about running someone with less baggage or better hair.

So no, I don't think Trump believes he'll be reinstated in August. I don't think Trump really believes anything, not in the way that most people hold beliefs at least. He has a purely instrumentalized view of the world:
"Beliefs" aren't sincerely held, but just another tool to manipulate others. He never asks himself "is this true?" so much as "what will it get me to say this?" And when it comes to this particular conspiracy theory, the answer may sadly be "quite a lot."

_________________

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-6-2021

Trump aide asked DoJ to investigate bizarre
‘Italygate’ claim votes were changed by satellite.

Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pressured the acting attorney general to help push the lie of electoral fraud in Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden – even asking him to investigate a conspiracy theory which said people in
Italy used military satellites to make US voting machines switch votes for Biden.
(((holyfuk! those people are insane same as their leader, ferfuk))))

Before he became Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, Meadows was a hard-right congressman from North Carolina and a loyal Trump supporter.
The Times said he emailed acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen five times in December and January.

One email dealt with the “Italygate” conspiracy theory, the Times said, adding that Rosen refused to set up a meeting with a former CIA agent pushing
the claims online.

Another email reportedly echoed claims by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who led a legal challenge to election results largely laughed out of court, that results in New Mexico were affected by fraud. There is no evidence that was the case.

Rosen resisted Meadows and also rebuffed Trump directly, citing former attorney general William Barr’s view that there was no large-scale fraud in the 2020 election, the Times said.

Trump reportedly considered replacing Rosen with
an official more amenable to attempts to overturn the election. But Rosen stayed in place through the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, when Trump supporters sought to disrupt the certification of election results.

Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent tweeted:
“We are at a place where Republican voters can more easily be convinced that Italy (?) secretly altered ballots using remote technology than that simply more people voted for a normal candidate from the opposing party.”

The academic and author Norman Ornstein said pushing the Italygate conspiracy theory made Meadows an “unAmerican traitor to our fundamental values [who] does not belong in a civil and democratic society or political system.”

The emails were discovered by the Senate judiciary committee.

In a statement, the Democratic committee chairman, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said: “This new evidence underscores the depths of the White House’s efforts to co-opt the department and influence the electoral vote certification.

“I will demand all evidence of Trump’s efforts to weaponise the justice department in his election subversion scheme.”

_________________

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

6-5-2021

"Delusion." "Off the chart bonkers." "Insane." "Objectively nuts." These are some of the terms that pundits — both on the left and on the right — are using to describe Donald Trump's reported belief that he will be "reinstated" as president in August, a belief that is tied to the growing enthusiasm in QAnon circles for a Myanmar-style coup d'état.

It's a comforting story: that Trump is a doddering fool who is lost in a pathetic fantasy. After all, there is no process to "reinstate" a former president.
Moreover, the people who Trump is clearly getting this idea from are total kooks like his former lawyer Sidney Powell and pillow salesman Mike Lindell.
And Trump himself is the "inject bleach" guy, no one's model for rigorous empirical thinking.

Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where it's unwise to underestimate Donald Trump.

It's true, of course, that there is no pathway (outside of a true military coup, which Trump is almost certainly not up to organizing) that would oust Joe Biden and install Trump in the White House within three months.
But after all of this time, one would hope that U.S. punditry would grasp the fact that Trump's conspiracy theories are often not so much literal as they are aspirational.

Trump uses wild conjecture to project images of what he wants the world to look like, and passively allows his minions — whether they are close to him, like Rudy Giuliani, or worship him from afar, like the Capital rioters — to self-direct the actions they will take in order to make his fantasy a reality.

As I note in today's Standing Room Only newsletter, Trump loves the "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" style of giving orders, where he just puts a wish out into the world and hopes other people will pick up what he's putting down.

As his former lawyer Michael Cohen famously noted in his testimony before the House before he went to prison for crimes committed on Trump's behalf,
"He doesn't give you questions, he doesn't give you orders. He speaks in a code."
It's a strategy that shields Trump from consequences while his self-directed minions, like Cohen or Giuliani or the Capitol rioters, take the fall. It also means less work for Trump.

So, no, Trump isn't going to be reinstated. But he probably doesn't actually think he will be.
(His fellow conspiracy theorists like Sidney Powell will also, when the chips are down, admit that they don't really believe all the crazy crap they say.)

But the purpose of floating that he could be reinstated is not to express a sincerely held belief so much as it is to send a message to his followers and, even more disturbingly, to GOP leadership:

He wishes them to ramp up their already alarming attacks on democracy. Trump has already been successful at turning his false claims that the election was stolen from him into a litmus test for Republican politicians. Now he's upping the ante, using the mainstream media to amplify his message that it's time to start getting even more aggressive in the fight to end American democracy.

The most immediate goals expressed in Trump's conspiracy theories are often not achievable, but in the mere act of setting a marker with conspiracy theories, Trump often moves the needle closer to his goal of outright fascism.

We saw how this played out with the January 6 insurrection. Trump fixated for weeks on a conspiracy theory that held that Vice President Mike Pence could simply deny Congress the right to count electoral votes and that doing so would magically result in Trump getting a second term.

On its surface, this conspiracy theory was delusional. Pence didn't hold that power, and even if he did, the Constitution orders that the person sworn in is not the guy who lost the election, but the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

So while Trump failed at his literal goal of staying in the White House, by every other measure, the January 6 insurrection he incited was a wild success.

To be sure, there were a few shaky days right after it happened where many Republican leaders seemed angry with Trump. Soon, however, they fell in line in supporting Trump, covering up for his insurrection, and punishing any Republican leaders who continued to believe that attempting to overthrow the U.S. government is a bad thing to do.

And then they weaponized the Big Lie Trump used to incite the insurrection in order to justify state-level assaults on voting rights and fair elections.

Republican leaders "agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized," Adam Serwer writes in a piece titled
"The Capitol Rioters Won" for the Atlantic. Now "the Republican Party has focused on the long-term project of engineering the electorate to preserve its hold on power."

One of the most common misconceptions about conspiracy theories is that they are sincere expressions of belief. Sometimes that's true, but just as often, conspiracy theories are better understood functionally, not literally.

They are tools that conspiracy theorists use to further their larger goals. It's irrelevant whether Trump "believes" that he could have kept power by stopping the electoral vote count on January 6 or that he'll be reinstated in August.

What matters is how he uses these conspiracy theories, to promote the ideological belief that a multi-racial democracy is bad, that a white conservative minority deserves to rule over the majority, and that any means necessary to make that happen are on the table.

Trump doesn't just believe that he'll be "reinstated" in August. If it was merely a belief, he could play golf all day, content that the Secret Service will show up soon to whisk him off to his rightful place in the White House on the appointed date.

But instead, as the National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke — himself a hardcore conservative, if one who is a little more reality-bound than most — wrote, "Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief." It's not a passive expression of belief, but an instrument that Trump is using to manipulate the media, his followers, and the Republican party.

This particular conspiracy theory has a twofold function. The first and most obvious is to keep pushing the Republican party towards fascism.

But of course, they're already going there, so probably didn't need more of a push from Trump.

The second, and perhaps more important to Trump himself, is that the conspiracy theory keeps him at the center of this story. Trump is "frustrated" and "having a hard time getting through" because "people are no longer obsessed with what Donald Trump has to say."

It's definitely possible that Republicans will use Trump's Big Lie to build up all this anti-democratic infrastructure — voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, laws that make it easy to throw out elections that Democrats win — and that politicians other than Trump will be the main beneficiaries.

There are almost three years until Republicans can vote in a presidential primary, and a lot can happen in that time.
Trump's emergence as the next nominee is not guaranteed, as much as it may seem to be right now. And so the GOP may be set up to steal the next presidential election, but for someone who isn't Trump.
This new conspiracy theory helps reinscribe the notion that Trump is the only path forward for the GOP, that his ascendance is preordained, and that Republicans better not even consider thinking about running someone with less baggage or better hair.

So no, I don't think Trump believes he'll be reinstated in August. I don't think Trump really believes anything, not in the way that most people hold beliefs at least. He has a purely instrumentalized view of the world:
"Beliefs" aren't sincerely held, but just another tool to manipulate others. He never asks himself "is this true?" so much as "what will it get me to say this?" And when it comes to this particular conspiracy theory, the answer may sadly be "quite a lot."

_________________

» Trump Will Be Reinstated Tomorrow--
» Rupert Murdoch; Trump Is Unfit For Office.
» Iran to Trump; “We Had A Deal When You Entered Office.''
» Twitter / Facebook / Social Media / Trump
» CNN hemorrhaging viewers since Trump left office, down nearly 50% in key measurables